Members and Trustees

MEMBERS

Right Reverend Dr Steven Croft

The Rt. Revd. Dr. Steven Croft became Bishop of Oxford in 2016. He was previously the Bishop of Sheffield, team leader of Fresh Expressions, Warden of Cranmer Hall and Vicar of Ovenden in Halifax. He is a co-author of the Emmaus and Pilgrim Resources. His latest book is The Gift of Leadership (Canterbury Press, 2016).

Oxford Diocesan Board of Education

The Oxford Diocesan Board of Education is a member acting corporately by hand of one of its directors

Peter Norman

Peter was head of The Warriner School, Oxfordshire (2001 - 2007) and Waddesdon Church of England School, Buckinghamshire (2007 - 2017).

He has served as an ex-oﬃcio governor at both The Warriner and Waddesdon Cof E School and as a parent governor and chair of governors at Waddesdon Village Primary School, Buckinghamshire. Peter is a member of the Diocese of Oxford Board of Education and currently chairs the School Eﬀectiveness Committee and serves on the Executive Committee.

Maureen Lomas

Maureen worked for over 40 years in further education, initially as a lecturer in Maths, Statistics, and computing, and later as a Management Information manager. In 1999 she became Director of ICT at West Herts College in Watford, and following that worked for ten years as an independent consultant/interim manager in F.E. helping colleges prepare for audit and for inspection. She is also treasurer/CRB officer for her local church and Chair of governors at a nearby Church of England Primary school.

Maureen has been a member of the Board of Education, and its Development Committee for the last six years, and firmly believes that children hold the key to a successful future for this country and for the Church. During the last synod the Board has significantly expanded the services that the Diocese offers to schools as County Council services have been reduced. She is also a member of the Diocesan HR Committee.

TRUSTEES

Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson

The Bishop of Buckingham (Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson) has served in the Diocese of Oxford since 1979, at Balliol College 1979-81 and NSM at Eynsham, then Curate of Caversham & Mapledurham (1982-89), and first incumbent of St John the Baptist Caversham from 1989-92. Moving to Sandhurst as Rector in 1992, he contributed to continuing ministerial education by developing residential training workshops in supervision skills for training incumbents, and as a Diocesan Work Consultant.

He led the planning group for the Diocesan Convention at High Wycombe in 2002. He was Area Dean of Sonning from 1998-2003, and honorary Canon of Christ Church, Oxford 2002-3. In October 2003 he became Area Bishop of Buckingham.

Fiona Craig

Fiona was a successful primary school headteacher for many years, both in Scotland and in Oxfordshire. In the last school in which she served (Shellingford Primary School 2004-2009) she took over in Special Measures and led the school to Outstanding in 2 years. She also received a Promethean Head Teacher of the Year award in 2008.

Fiona served the Oxford Diocese for a number of years as a headteacher member of the Diocesan Board of Education, and worked on a consultancy basis coaching and mentoring headteachers in school effectiveness, governance and budget planning. As part of the school improvement team in Oxfordshire County Council she led the successful improvement of schools from 2009 -2011, developing a unique approach to schools’ accessing and using external support.

As Deputy Director of Education for the Diocese (since 2012) she developed and led a new team of school improvement advisers, taking the percentage of Church schools judged Good or Better by Ofsted from 75% in 2012 to 92% in 2018. As Director, she now represents the DBE on a number of MATs as the corporate Member and in the Diocesan MATs, as an Ex officio director.

David Cousins

David’s previous experience includes a headship of a large and very successful primary school for over 10 years and as a school improvement manager working for Buckinghamshire County Council for 11 years. He also has experience as a Director of Schools for the Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust where he works part time. In this role plays a lead role in the Academy Improvement Committee. He has acted as CEO for this trust for a short period which gave him invaluable experience of the CEO role he now has with BST.

He has experience of trust HR, procedures, recruitment of school leaders and training of governing bodies

David is a lead School Inspector directly employed by Ofsted to carry out inspections on behalf of HMCI inspecting: Primary, Secondary, S8 and Sixth Form. He also inspects EYFS provision for children aged 3-5 years. He has experience of working and inspecting schools with provision for pupils with the following needs: MLD, SLD, SPLD, PMLD and BESD.

As an inspector he attends termly training to ensure his inspection practice is up—to-date. This includes sessions on evaluating provision in schools, understanding the new presentation of school data, safeguarding judgements, reviewing and evaluating the effectiveness of the curriculum and reviewing recent research on teaching learning and assessment.

Nat Wakely

Nat has been a Managing Director of four John Lewis branches with full P&L and site responsibility. Additionally, he was the Director responsible for JL health and safety and for the Occupational Health Service when running the southern half of John Lewis.

Subsequently he acted as the Retail Director on the JL board, then the Director responsible for redesigning the company’s pension provision and gaining agreement from Partners for that change, and was the Personnel Director on the Partnership Services (shared service for JL and Waitrose) Board, running the John Lewis Partnership’s Personnel operation. Latterly, he has led the transformation of Personnel function and is now in charge of replacing the company’s biggest IT system. Additionally, he led the sponsorship deal with LOCOG to support and sponsor the London Olympic Games from 2009 to 2012.

From 2007 to 2013, Nat was on the board of the New West End Company (the not for profit Business Improvement District for Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street).

Steve Edgar

Steve was the headteacher of a Buckinghamshire Upper School for 13 years, then worked for 10 years for Buckinghamshire County Council in School Improvement. He has a detailed understanding of the education provision and schools within Buckinghamshire, and this has been sustained in recent years by volunteer work as an Education Appeals Panel member. Hi is also a Trustee of the WWSET charity.

As Head of School Improvement he was accountable for school performance within Bucks both to members and the DfE. He is therefore familiar with evaluating and/or measuring school outcomes, progress measures and performance data. For the last 2 years of his time within Bucks, Steve became Head of Learning Trust, leading over 350 staff.

In 2013, the services Steve led were transferred into a charity and a large focus of his work was preparing for the transition, involving aspects of change management, staff restructuring and establishing appropriate governance arrangements and KPIs.

Rosie Harper

Rosie runs a three church Parish with a large turnover. Rosie is a member of the Archdeaconry senior staff with oversight of 270 churches, a member of Bishop’s Council: the Governing body of the Diocese of Oxford, and a trustee of the Oxford Diocesan Board of Finance. She is an elected member of The General Synod of the Church of England.

She is the chair of the Oxford Nandyal Education Foundation -an education charity in India. All these roles give her experience of Trusteeship, strategic planning, financial planning and compliance, change management, values based judgement, safeguarding matters and relationship and team building.

Michael Phipps

Michael is a retired Department for Education senior civil servant, who had responsible for policy advice to Ministers on school sector, managing passage of education legislation through Parliament, delivering various school standards programmes, and directing various major public expenditure programmes amounting to several hundred £million.

He has been chair of governors of Seer Green CE Primary Academy for the last 5 years steering its academy conversion in 2013 and preparation for successful Ofsted and SIAMS inspections in 2017; initiating development of the new vision, values and strategic 5-year plan; introducing new school and governing board self-evaluation programmes; he led the headteacher recruitment process in 2015/16; is chair of its admissions and performance management committees, and of various working groups.

Michael is an experienced trustee of several charities both large and small. He chaired two Quaker church boards of trustees: one local for Buckinghamshire (annual turnover up to £100k), one national for whole of UK (100+ staff, annual turnover £10m).

Cassa Messervy

Cassa is an experienced primary school teacher and senior leader involved in school improvement. She has worked as a governor at a local primary and secondary school, and was Chair of Trustees of the charity Lighthouse Beaconsfield, being involved in both setting it up and leading it.

She is currently a clerk in Holy orders and chairs the PCC and oversees the charity registered Church, Holy Trinity, Seer Green and Jordans Parish.

Kirsteen Roberts

Kirsteen spent 25 years in the commercial retail industry working for the John Lewis Partnership and was Managing Director of John Lewis High Wycombe for 6 years. This involved strategic leadership, change management, budget monitoring and control, as well as team leadership (circa 1200 staff).

Kirsteen then moved to the development division where she was responsible for overseeing 10 new department stores in 10 years. This gave her extensive experience of stakeholder management with local councils and communities, as well as property developers and major construction companies. John Lewis had a strong reputation in this field.

More recently, Kirsteen has been able to transfer this experience and expertise to the Oxford Diocesan Board of Education (ODBE) where she is responsible for developing free schools, liaising with local authorities and supporting MATs to deliver added value for their schools

Malcolm Peckham

Malcolm served on the Council of Keele University 2004 – 2014 having graduated from the University in 1969 in Economics and History with the Certificate of Education. He was appointed as Deputy Pro – Chancellor in 2008 and Pro – Chancellor/ Chair of Council in 2012.

After a period of training as an accountant with the Milk Marketing Board he taught in secondary modern, technical, comprehensive, grammar schools and an FE college before entering education administration. Malcolm held senior posts in Buckinghamshire and Croydon before being invited to establish a new LEA as the Director of Education in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, a post he held for nine successful years until retirement. Since that time he has provided consultancy across both England and Wales and retains numerous interests in local educational matters and recently stepped down from chairing the Wycombe and Marlow Teaching Schools Alliance.

He is now a director and trustee of Wycombe High School’s Multi Academy Trust and has been a board member of the London School of Theology since June 2016 where he is chair of the Finance and General Purposes Committee. He is also a trustee of the Wycombe Child Contact Centre. He has recently retired as a Magistrate after twenty two years service, latterly sitting in West London Magistrates Courts and the Crown Court at Isleworth.

Malcolm and his wife are active members of Union Baptist Church and have been in membership since 1979. They have been blessed with four daughters, four sons - in - law and twelve grandchildren.